ateolf | house

thus concludes a pretty hectic memorial day weekend...let me see if i can remember all the junk that happened...okay so friday Mary Beth and i go over to the Hanovers' to sit the Pig (madame Elizabeth)...i don't think we really did anything that evening other than care for the dog and hang out and such...we enjoyed the finer eating establishments in the neighborhood...that first night was our beloved Belmont...

saturday was an extremely hectic day...we went to Bogey's Deli, to whcih i'd never been and is awesome...well, in the shopping center i noticed a bookstore i'd never heard of...so we checked it out...upon entering, it's what you might expect: walls of romance novels...a place just like the book bank with all of its old drawbacks (stamping inside the damned cover, too high prices...probably even less decent stuff...) but the people there were nice...and their prices on older stuff are decent...i did make a resonably good find (the first book i'll mention alone was worth it all): Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser, Sappho,The Joke by Milan Kundera, Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins...okay, then back to walk and feed the Pig or whatever we were doing...then back out...it was Matt's birthday party so we needed to get him a present! so um...what do we get him? books, sure...we go to Burke's and um...damn...of course get some more damned books in the proess: One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta, The Tower Struck by Lightning by Fernando Arrabal, On with the Story by John Barth, What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies, Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow by M. Barnard Eldershaw, Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov, Something Happened by Joseph Heller, The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick, Rudolf by Marian Pankowski, Fury by Salman Rushdie, Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington, Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, and The Gook Lover by Ron Wulkan...the majority (i'm assuming, i didn't actually count) of these i'd never heard of but sounded interesting and were cheap...so yeah, fuck...i'd already been at the point of too much book-buying...way too much...but saturday's foray(s) was unplanned, still...must...stop...for...a while and stuff...(which had been my plan...anyway...) anyway...

well, back to the house to walk, etc the Pig...and now begins the stuff that happened in the evening...off we go downtown to the stinkin' New Daisy for a, ahem, battle of the bands...well, we only watched one band...(the thing lasted six hours at least, and with the dog sitting there's no way we could pull it off...) but the band was New Science System...in it is Pat, who i went to high school with and is now the band director of the same high school band...so i went to see him...we found out from him when they were playing so we went just at that time and left when they were done...then BACK out east to walk, etc Pig...then back to midtown to Yosemite Sam's for Matt's birtthday thingie and karaoke...i sang "Open Arms" and i think it went pretty well (i'd not so long ago decided it had to be about the best song for karaoke ever so i was eager to test my theory out...) afterwards the dj dude just fuckin' skipped me...fucking cunt...we wrapped the evening up at the Pancake Shop...

now that we have the outline, i'll sketch in a few details...we stopped by our place a few times in all this sallying back and forth...check on the cats, stock up on supplies, get a screwdriver: a new short anecdote! i'd shut their bathroom door not realizing it was locked (Pig had been drinking out of the toilet...and later i realized she almost wouldn't drink out of a [non-toilet] bowl at all...) and i found their tool box but it was locked...so thus the picking up a screwdriver to fix the door...Pig had been (so it seemed) acting a little funny...like she was sad, which is to be expected...she didn't really seem like she wanted to eat or walk...so there was much trying to coax her into these various necessities of a dog's existence...oh, and the Hanovers' bed is kinda weird, 'cuz it's one of them fancy hospital-like beds that move up and down and stuff, but it's for two people, so each side is independent of the other, so there's this weird ditch in the middle where the two mattresses connect...makes it a bit awkward for snuggling at night (sorry for the cheesiness...)

oh, i forgot to say at the beginning that at work on friday i finished reading Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami...anyway, i'll continue...

sunday after sleeping in a bit (at least i did) we dined at Houston's...Brad and Sherri had a cookout at their place (conveniently close by for once) but right before we went something odd happened...still not sure what happened...we're walking Pig, and she'd been doing this thing where she wants to go out then as soon as she's out, back in...so a bit of this and for once i don't lock the door 'cuz i've been going out and in and out so much...and this time she feels like walking a bit, we still don't go far...just two few houses down...while we're two houses away an suv comes up by their house, a lady gets out walks up an,d according to Mary Beth (which i didn't even see this), goes inside the house and comes back out in a matter of seconds...and Mary Beth said she didn't have anything when she went, but left with some envelopes (which i did see, didn't see her walking up though) and then she left...nothing seemed out of order, the mail we'd collected seemed to be together...i figure she's someone they know...but...it was weird...i hope i didn't screw something up, but it's too weird with how it happened for her not to be someone they know that should've been there...i don't know...anyway...to Brad and Sherri's cookout...there was food and fun...i hurt Elizabeth (their kid, not the dog) playing frisbee, but it only lasted a few seconds and she wanted me to keep throwing it right afterwards (it had hit her mouth/tooth...but i grew reluctant to throw it after that, alas...) and later on we played this card game called Apples to Apples and it was like fun and stuff...but i like dorky things as such...

there had been some confusion as to when the owners were returning, i was originally told by Justin they were coming back on monday...then when i talked to them on thursday they said sunday in passing...so i was thinking sunday...so but uh they didn't return and we weren't ready for another night so we had to go back to our home get some crap and come back...and it was late when we left the party...and then we had to get up early to walk Pig...so i was pretty tired today...though i was happy that this morning was the first time she actually wanted to walk...and we went quite a ways so that pleased me...work was nice...so fucking slow...so so fucking slow...it was pretty great...they returned an hour before i got off...and now we're back home...thus the saga concludes...